Daylight Saving Chaos: “What in the Hell is the Time?”

We are humans living in the 21st century. We work like crazy. We have appointments and business meetings. What do we look at all the time? The clock, the watch, or the cell phone. We do so for one reason: It’s all about time. We depend on it, we build our miserable lives around it, and there is one question we always need answered: What in the hell is the time?

We just need to know, because it tells us when to eat, when to sleep, even when to go to the bathroom. It tells us when we need to enter data into clouds, write our next useless Powerpoint presentation, when we need to walk the dog, feed the baby, have the car checked, take the kids to the private math teacher and when to take a nap, in order to forget about time for a few hours.

There is one single thing on Earth which makes us nervous: It’s when we do not know the answer to the big question, thanks to the chaos around what they call daylight saving time. Nobody ever understands which way to turn the damned clock. Is it forward or backward? Will we sleep less or more when daylight saving time is being dumped, or when it comes back?

It gets worse: Our family members, friends or business partners in a country called the United States of America do not switch times back and forth on the same day we, the stupid Europeans, do. This means we might call them at 6:00 a.m. in the morning, before breakfast, while they are brushing their dentures. Or, even worse, they might call us late at night, while we are just about to switch off “Bridge of Spies”, after the Supreme Court scene, and finally fall asleep.

So, let’s look at the facts around the daylight saving mess:

What do Americans have to do on early Sunday morning?

Nothing. They can just eat their hot cakes for breakfast and go back to bed. That is because they already switched to daylight saving time on March 11th, 2018.

What should residents in Hawaii and Arizona do?

Go surfing and look after their cattle. They don’t have to turn clocks like the rest of us, because they chose not to take part in this whole mess.

We should just sleep. The fact of the matter is that our cell phones and computers will change to daylight saving time automatically. It’s only that ugly Ikea kitchen clock which has to be set accordingly. But that can wait until later on Sunday morning. Take our word for it.

What do Latin Americans, Asians, Africans and Australians do?

The Australians have a complicated scheme in some provinces. We won’t even get into it. Asian countries don’t take part, since they are smart. The same applies to African countries. In Latin America, many countries do not have daylight saving time either. In countries like Brazil or Mexico, some states or provinces do, while others do not.

When does the damned daylight saving time start in Europe, and when does it finally end?

It starts this coming Sunday, March 25th, 2018, and ends on Sunday, October 28th, 2018.

Were you planning to say what way the time on our kitchen clocks should be changed, or is this question not important enough?

On Sunday morning, set all clocks and watches one hour forward. This means we will sleep less, in theory. On October 28th, set those clocks and watches one hour backward.